“Why would I trust a message from you? You could have been a Cores operative, trying to get me to break cover.”
Leo nodded. He had guessed why Zyr hadn't come out of the shadows. Still . . . “I communicated with Veld when he was the leader. He strung me along for a while, until I eventually worked out he was playing me, that he never intended to meet. But I tried to reach out again when I heard he'd been . . . deposed.”
“Veld and Garde, his second-in-command, both,” Zyr agreed. He said nothing more, but Leo had long wondered what had happened. A falling out was obvious, but if Zyr hadn't killed the former leader and his second-in-command, it was a mystery as to where they were.
The Cores didn't let anyone off Garmen, and while Tether Town ran to at least a million people, Veld couldn't have disappeared that completely into the shanties.
Not with Leo actively looking for him.
“Well, now you're here, right in front of me, what do you have to say?” Zyr asked, and a hush seemed to fall over the small group.
Leo had kept watch on who had entered the room while he was speaking to Zyr.
Sunny stood to one side of him, still on some sort of guard duty, but aside from the woman who'd come in, a man has also joined them. The two newcomers stood beside Sofie, and now they turned toward him and Zyr.
Leo shook his head. “Before I say anything that would get me into a lot of trouble with the Cores, who are these people?”
Zyr nodded in respect. “Raym and Fallia are my deputies. You already know Sunny, who was checking up on Sofie while she was in Felicitos.”
At that, Sofie lifted her head, eyes wide.
Zyr shrugged. “Sorry, Sofe, but things are complicated.”
“Explain complicated.” She was shocked, Leo could see, but she kept her tone even.
Zyr looked over at him. “That's not something I'm going to say in front of a stranger.”
This is where they had their sticking point.
Neither of them trusted the other enough. And Leo knew that was probably how it should be. This was a high-stakes game, and he wasn't prepared to throw it away by trusting someone he shouldn't.
Even if they obviously cared for Sofie.
“Let me guess--Veld and Garde switched sides to work for the Cores, but none of you realized it.” Leo had guessed that was the reason the old leader and his deputy had vanished just under a year ago. “And now you're afraid that Veld told the Cores Sofie was one of you.”
There was absolute silence for a moment.
“Tell me what you know.” Zyr's voice had deepened. His hand reached out, as if to grab Leo's arm, but he managed to control the instinct and dropped it.
“I don't know anything for sure.” Leo kept his gaze on Sofie, who seemed to be even more stunned than the others. They knew this, she obviously didn't. “But when the head of an organization and his second disappear so completely, it's either because there's been a coup, and someone wants to take the organization in a different direction, or they are suspected or discovered to be traitors.” He finally glanced at Zyr. “But the resistance hasn't changed direction; in fact, I'd say you've been more successful against the Cores in the last year than you were in all the years before that. So my inference was that Veld was undermining you from within, and taking payment from the Cores to do so.”
Zyr seemed to deflate. “Fucker was probably working for them from the start.”
“Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.” Sofie spoke for the first time. “That's what Veld used to say. Every time he said it, he must have been laughing to himself.”
Zyr's light green eyes flashed in fury. “You and I were always alike, Sofe. Of everything, thinking back on it now, that little saying of his is what pisses me off the most.”
“So what happened to Veld and his deputy?” Leo asked.
Zyr lifted his shoulders. “I wish I knew. He and Garde worked the transport hovers up on the landing deck, loading and unloading goods from the big transport ships to the warehouses. It's hard to get up there without the proper authorization, but I managed it once, spied on them for a little while. There's a big warehouse there where they were always working, but I couldn't see any obvious signs of collusion. Unlike what you think, I didn't work out Veld and Garde were traitors and kick them out until after they left. I was working on it, Veld knew I was suspicious, but they disappeared before I could confront him. One day they were here, then they headed for work, and no one saw them again.”
“And after they left?” Sofie asked him.
“When I got into that office of Veld's, and had Fallia work her decrypt magic, we found deals going back years with the Cores. I don't know if he was independent, and sabotaging us when they chose to pay him, or whether he was a mole they'd put in at the beginning who'd always been on their payroll. Everything was compromised.”
“Rach.” Sofie said the name as if she was lost. “I knew he was responsible for Rach's death. I just thought he'd sent her in somewhere without enough protection.”
Zyr rubbed a hand over his mouth. “From what Fallia found in the files, it seems Rach had worked out Veld's secret. I don't think the Cores killed her like we thought, Sofe. I think either Veld or Garde did it themselves.”
Sofie sucked in a breath. “And he's still out there somewhere?”
“Not on-planet.” Zyr shook his head. “He's gone. Garde with him. I paid a lot of what we had in the war chest to someone who worked with them on the Deck for information. They told me both of them got off Garmen. Got a Cores job elsewhere.”
“The Cores don't operate elsewhere,” Sofie said.
“If you believe that,” Leo said, “I have a tethered way station to sell you.”
Chapter 10
She'd hated Veld for so long.
Hated the way he'd manipulated Rach, had sucked her in and then spit her out, sending her--she'd thought--to her death.
But it had been more direct than that. Less complicated.
Veld had killed her himself.
And then stood beside Sofie and tried to tell her that sacrifices had to be made sometimes. That it was a dangerous world, and belonging to the resistance was risky. A risk everyone accepted.
Rach had died getting information, he'd told her. Her death was an honorable one.
She had died getting information, it seemed.
Only, it wasn't information about the Cores exec Veld had pushed Rach to get involved with. It had been information about him.
“Do you think Veld got paid for Rach sleeping with that exec? That he got pimp money?” she asked. “After all, he sent her to him.”
The room fell dead silent.
“I never even thought about that,” Raym said. “But knowing what I know now about him, I wouldn't be surprised.”
“We don't do that anymore, Sofe. I agreed with you from the start there was no need for any of us to compromise ourselves like that, and since I took control, it's off the table as a strategy.” Zyr took a step toward her, but there was a lot he'd kept from her in the last year, and she gave a quick shake of her head to back him off.
“And you think he sold us all out? That the Cores know I'm a previous operative?” A wave of cold fear flowed over her just thinking about how she'd delivered herself into their hands day after day.
“I don't know. A few members have gone missing since he left. Just disappeared.” Zyr shrugged. “I think some went with him, to whatever dirty job the Cores had for him. But others have died nasty deaths on the street. Some of it may just be T-Town being T-Town, but there's a little too many for coincidence.”
“And you didn't think to tell me?” Sofie didn't know what to do with her hands. She gripped them together, let them go. Gripped them again.
“I didn't want to admit to you I hadn't seen it.” Zyr was watching her with those beautiful green eyes, and she could see he was agonized. “And I wanted a better grasp of the situation. I needed to know who was in it with him. Could he have been in bed with
the Cores that long and not turned others, or paid them to look the other way?”
“You think the rot goes deeper?” Leo's question made them all remember he was in the room.
Zyr nodded. “Has to. Just . . . has to. So Fallia and I kept things quiet after we read the decrypted files. And we worked through them. Found ourselves a rat or two. And they paid the price.” His voice was grim. “But there might be others. We cleared who we could. Raym and Sunny, and probably about twenty others I can absolutely say are clean. But that leaves a lot of others. Most are innocent, but I just need to trust one wrong person, and the Cores will know. I'm waiting for someone to approach me. Someone to offer me money to keep Veld's work up.”
“You thought it might be me,” Leo murmured. “You thought I might be the one the Cores were sending to offer you the same terms they'd given Veld.”
Zyr nodded.
“How do we know it's not him?” Raym asked.
“Sofes?” Fallia turned to her.
Sofie lifted her gaze to Leo's. “He's no Cores agent. They've tried to kill him twice in three days.”
“That would make it three times this month.” Leo's lips quirked at the edges.
“What have you done to rile them up so much?” Zyr asked.
Leo hesitated. “Like you, I have a few trust issues. Suffice to say, I'm hitting them where it hurts them the most.”
“Their profit column,” Sofie said, and Leo flashed a quick smile at her.
“To what end? Your own enrichment?” Sunny shifted his stance, but Sofie saw he'd dropped his hand, pointing his laz at the ground, rather than at Leo.
Leo turned and gave him a cool look. “Again, that's my business. I don't know you well enough to go into details.”
Neither side did, Sofie thought, with a touch of impatience. But given Veld's betrayal, and Leo's recent brushes with assassins, she couldn't blame either group.
And she was stuck in the middle.
“What's your end game?” Leo moved his gaze from her to Zyr. “What's the resistance hoping for.”
“We want to overthrow the Cores, but given that that would take more than a few of us with it, we've settled on doing what you say you are doing, too. We're cutting into their profits.”
Leo frowned. “How?”
Fallia and Zyr exchanged a look. Raym looked mutinous, as if he didn't think it was a good idea to talk, but eventually, Zyr's body language changed, relaxed a little.
“Sofie isn't the only person working in a Core Company. We have an army of them. And they pass us what they hear, who's dealing with who, what price X is paying compared to Y. And then we pass the information along to whoever is losing out. It stirs up resentment, it degrades the Top Five's trust in each other, and ultimately, it disrupts their businesses.”
Leo whistled. “I wondered why I started making more money about six months ago. That's the accumulated effect of this, isn't it? The Cores would rather go to independents like me, because you've eroded their trust in each other, and it's hurting them. They're starting to get reckless with their off-planet machinations, because they're getting desperate.”
“What off-planet machinations?” Raym asked, suddenly fully engaged.
“There's been a few incidents recently . . .” Leo frowned at them, and then realization dawned in his eyes. “You can't get access to interplanetary comms, can you?”
“We aren't Core execs,” Zyr reminded him. “I'm assuming you can?”
Leo nodded, and Sofie stared at him. She hadn't realized he had access.
“The heads of independent corporations that make over a certain amount do have access. It's a concession for the level of trading fee we pay them.”
“And?” Zyr asked.
They were all suddenly hanging on his every word. Sofie herself hadn't realized how hungry she was for outside news until now.
“There've been two incidents recently in the Verdant String, one on Cepi, a moon that used to orbit Kalastoni, and another in Var, the capital city of Parn. Both cases involved a ship that looked like stolen Verdant String tech, and had at least some smugglers involved.”
“The Verdant String is blaming the Breakaways? Blaming Garmen?” Sofie didn't know whether that was good or bad news.
“Not outright, but it has the Breakaways' fingerprints all over it. It's got to be coming either from Garmen or Lassa, or both working together.”
“What happened in the incidents?” Fallia leaned in.
Leo lifted his shoulders. “They tried to steal some tech from Cepi, and when they were caught, they destroyed the evidence by strafing the moon from their warship. And in Var, they blew up a string of buildings. Both times it was made to look like rebels or insurgents causing trouble. They used Halatians as hostages both times, as well.”
There was silence for a beat.
Everyone went still.
“What did I say?” Leo's gaze swung around the room, came to rest on her.
“Veld always used to say Halatians would make the perfect hostages.” Sofie forced herself to speak. “He used to complain to me and Rach that even though we had a Halatian father, we didn't get the blue hair because our mother was Arkhoran. He used to say if he held a gun to a Halatian's head, he'd get whatever he wanted from the VSC.”
“That's exactly what they tried to do.” Leo tilted his head. “Maybe that new job Veld got from the Cores involved planning insurgent maneuvers off-planet.”
“Did they arrest the insurgents?” Raym asked.
“Some of them,” Leo said. “Most of them are dead.”
“The VSC killed them?”
Leo shook his head. “Every single one was killed by their own side, the VSC assumes to stop them from talking.”
“Now that clinches it.” Zyr's voice was a deep rumble. “The Cores are definitely involved.”
Chapter 11
Leo felt the itch to be back in his office, accessing the interplanetary comms to find out if there was any mention of Veld or Garde in connection with the Cepi incident, or what had just happened in Var.
But there was something more important he had to do first--he had to work out how to protect Sofie.
“The Cores execs and their guards saw you earlier,” he said to her. “When you jumped from hover to hover over the--” His throat closed up. He hadn't realized how much what she'd done had scared him until now. He cleared his throat. “Over the hoverway.”
“You think they'll be looking for me?”
His automatic response was yes, but he hesitated. “It's possible they'll assume you're one of my guards.”
Zyr nodded. “That's true, and if it is, they won't spend any time on her.”
Leo looked over at him. “Unless they want to bribe her. Like they did the guard Sofie saved me from two nights ago.”
“All the more likely they'll think I'm your guard, then,” Sofie pointed out. “They might decide you were pretending to be out to dinner with me to see if they'd make a move.”
Leo realized she was right. “That would be as good an outcome as we can expect.”
“I'd rather they didn't take me aside for questioning when I try to leave Felicitos tonight, or when I come in to work tomorrow.” Sofie's tone was dry.
“Don't go out the the main doors. Use an alternative exit,” Zyr told her.
Leo wondered if the alternative exit was what she'd used two nights ago to get them both out of Felicitos. He would have to ask her to show that to him again, this time when he was conscious.
“I'll find out what I can from Finkle about what happened after I followed you. If you're in any danger from the Cores, I'll make sure you get the message.”
Sofie narrowed her eyes at him.
“Would the person who gives me that message be the same person who scared the life out of me the other day?” She turned her narrow-eyed gaze on Zyr. “Or can I thank you for that?”
Leo cleared his throat. “That was my doing.”
Sofie's look should have dropped hi
m where he stood.
“I thought it was the Cores,” she said, her voice cold. “I nearly got killed running into some oppos because I was trying to get away from your guy.”
“I should have told you.” He still went cold at the thought of her down a dangerous alley, but it had been replaced in his head with the sight of her leaping across the hoverway. “I wanted to make sure there was no fallout for you after what happened in The High Flyer.”
“And was there?” Zyr asked. “Any fallout?”
Sofie shook her head. “I don't think so.”
Leo also shook his head. “My team says there's been no moves against her. No followers, no watchers.”
“Jumping over the hoverway is a little more high viz,” Fallia said. She had dark eyes, and they were full of worry. “You have to be more careful, Sofe. Zyr's right. Go out the alternative route. I'll go with you.”
Sofie looked over at him. “And you? They're ramping up their attacks on you.”
“And you still haven't told us why,” Zyr said.
Leo hesitated. A little information wouldn't hurt. “When Veld was running the resistance, I tried to get in touch, to coordinate my efforts with him, if that was possible, but as I told you, he strung me along, and I gave up. I didn't tell him who I was, something I'm grateful for given what you've told me about his connection to the Cores, although I'm surprised he didn't try to find out more about what I wanted. It would have been in the Cores' interests.”
“What Fallia discovered in the files she decrypted shows a pattern of laziness more than anything. He made as much money as he could with as little effort as possible. He wasn't prepared to go the extra mile for the Cores. He wasn't a believer in anything but his own profit.”
“How convenient for us.” Leo knew the type. Knew he'd rather go up against someone like Veld than a fanatical believer any day.
Zyr inclined his head. “So when Veld brushed you off?”
“I started doing a little resistance of my own.” Leo wasn't going to give them anything too specific.
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